Surprise! Mom packed you a nice gun

A 7-year-old boy brought a 22-caliber pistol, a loaded magazine and a flare gun to school in his backpack.

Story highlights

New York police say a Queens mom put guns in her son's school backpack

She says she forgot to take them out before school

The discovery of the guns caused a lockdown

Now the mom is facing charges and two of her sons are in protective custody

Things a 7-year-old boy expects Mom to put in his backpack: A peanut butter sandwich. Pencils. Maybe even a nice note with a little heart scrawled on it.

Things he doesn't: a flare gun, a .22-caliber pistol, a loaded magazine and, for good measure, 14 more bullets in a plastic bag.

But that's exactly what a second-grader had inside his Batman backpack Thursday morning when he arrived at Wave Preparatory Elementary School in Far Rockaway in Queens, Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said Friday.

The mom, Deborah Farley, 53, told police she had been, according to Browne, "out walking the streets of Queens late Wednesday night" with the guns in her son's backpack and she forgot to take them out.

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As Congress grapples with major gun control legislation proposals, brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers and children write about the people they loved and lost to gun violence and how it changed their lives.